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About the Office of Scale Research

The Office of Scale Research (OSR) was created within the Department of Marketing at Southern Illinois University by Dr. Gordon C. Bruner II and Dr. Paul J. Hensel in the late 1980s. The office is best known for its role in developing the early volumes of the Marketing Scales Handbook series. Volume 1 was published by the American Marketing Association (AMA) in late 1992 and was the first collection of marketing-related measurement scales ever published. Volume 2 was released in 1996 (AMA), the third volume came out in early 2001 (AMA), and Volume 4 (CB and AD portions) was released in 2005 (jointly published by AMA and Thomson).

Changes in authors and publishers almost led to the end of the work. Eventually, Dr. Bruner decided to continue on his own. Volumes 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 have since been released and work on Volume 10 is in development. More about the books can be found at this site as well as at MarketingScales.

This OSR website provides researchers, students, and others assistance by showing what scales have been developed already so they can use them rather than going to the effort and expense of developing new ones from scratch. The tables of contents for each volume of the Marketing Scales Handbook is available. A reading list is provided for those who are interested in furthering their understanding of scale construction and validation. Likewise, the links page is useful in identifying other sources of scale-related information. A few technical reports are provided that deal with various scaling issues. Finally, after 20+ years of gathering and critcally reviewing scales, Dr. Bruner is in a unique position to comment from time-to-time on scales-relates issues. That and other news about his current work are found on the News page.